"Out of one hundred thousand people whose lives have always been bad, you will find barely one who is worthy of indulgence."

I have a few questions about this.

Does this mean that we have a 1 out of 100,000 chance that we are actually in a state of grace, even though we are not conscious of any mortal sin currently on our soul?

What is St. Jerome classifying as “people who’s lives have always been bad”?

What is meant by “worthy of indulgence”?

Do you have a source for the quote? I’d like to see any surrounding context.

Also, Saint Jerome appears to have been expressing a personal opinion, not a hard and fast doctrine of the Church. Saint Jerome also has a reputation for being very polemical and opinionated, which was common for debates of that period.

Indulgence is a remission of temporal punishment. Jerome could also be talking about indulgence as being pleasure.

I would prefer not to speculate too much without additional context, but I was thinking it sounded more like “worth the time/likely to repent” (from a practical standpoint, not theological). I would need to see more, though.